In the spring, a friend gave me a small book called “Holy Moments” by Matthew Kelly.  He describes a “holy moment” as:

“A Holy Moment is a single moment in which you open yourself to God.  You make yourself available to Him.  You set aside personal preference and self-interest, and for one moment you do what you prayerfully believe God is calling you to do.”

Later in the book he describes a famous Holy Moment from Victor Hugo’s epic story Les Miserables.  The story involves Jean Valjean, and a local bishop. Here are Matthew Kelly’s exact words to describe what happened in the story because he has written it so beautifully.

There is an amazing moment in Victor Hugo’s epic story Les Miserables.  The main character is a man named Jean Valjean.  Released from prison after nineteen years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread, he is bitter, angry, and resentful of everyone.  One evening he knocks on a door looking for food.  The owner welcomes him into his home to share a meal and to stay the night.

Valjean repays this generous hospitality by stealing his host’s silverware.  The police capture him the next day and bring him back to return the silverware.  But Valjean’s host protects his thieving guest, telling the police that the silverware was a gift.  This act of kindness, this Holy Moment, sets Valjean free in every way imaginable.

Jean Valjean’s host was an elderly bishop, a true man of God.  He knew Holy Moments had the power to ransom people from fear and hatred and return them to God.

This encounter with the bishop was the first time in decades Valjean had been treated with love, respect, and compassion.  It forever changes him.

It was a moment of tender care.  The bishop did not see Valjean as a thief and he did not see himself as a bishop.  He saw only two brothers.  In that moment nothing else mattered to him except what was best for Jean Valjean.  It was indeed a Holy Moment.

This one moment of brotherly love set off a domino effect of goodness.  As a result of the bishop’s goodness, the effect of that one Holy Moment, Valjean unleashes an astonishing wave of Holy Moments everywhere he goes for the rest of his life.  These Holy Moments touch thousands of lives and transform a whole town.

Valjean was hopeless.  Devastated by hatred and injustice, having suffered so much throughout his life, he had lost faith in himself, in others, in God, and in society.  One man restored his hope in one moment, and Jean Valjean was able to change and go on to become a universal symbol of redemption and hope.

Matthew Kelly goes on to describe the hopelessness of our world today.  He asks a question: What gives you hope?  We see hopelessness all around us on a daily basis.  It’s on the news and possibly in our own lives, but definitely in the lives of many around us, either at work, in the news, or in our families.  He says that Holy Moments can bring people hope.

We have the chance to brighten the lives of people that we meet every day.  Even just a smile, or a kind word can change someone’s day and have a ripple effect on each person that person meets for the rest of his or her day.  Kindness begets kindness.  Love begets love and gives a person hope.

The good bishop in Les Miserables also committed another act of astounding generosity.  He was promoted to the rank of bishop late in life and after becoming a bishop, he was given a beautiful mansion to live in.  When he arrived at his new home, he noticed how many rooms it had.  Then he went next door to the hospital to have a look at the hospital.  It was very small and narrow.  In the hospital, he met the director and they both strolled over to the larger house.  Bishop Myriel asked the director how many patients were in the hospital, and was told that there were twenty-six.   Then he asked the director how many beds he thought could be put into the dining room of the large house.  The director said that the big house could hold twenty beds just in the dining room.  Bishop Myriel immediately said, I’m sorry sir, but I believe there has been a mistake.  You have twenty-six people in five or six little rooms.  In this house, we just have three people in a space that could hold sixty.  It’s obvious that there has been a mistake.  Clearly you have my house and I have yours.  And just like that, he gives his sumptuous home to the hospital, all the while making it seem like it was merely a mistake.  Such on the spot generosity is completely uncommon in our days.  It clearly an example of a holy moment.

At the beginning of the book, Holy Moments, The author tells another story.  The story is about a group of monks that lost their purpose and began to bicker amongst themselves.  So they decide to send a messenger to a holy man who could tell them what to do.  The messenger goes and does find the holy man who tells the messenger to go back and tell the group of monks, “The Messiah is among you.”  The messenger does just that.  Can you imagine what happens?  Do you think the bickering can continue when they don’t know who “He” might be?

The Messiah is among you!

Since we are all children of God and Messiah is God’s beloved Son, can’t we also say, “Messiah lives among you?!  What will happen when we live with that thought central in our mind and life?  From the play, “Les Miserables”:

To love another person
Is to see the face of God

If you have seven minutes to enjoy the epilogue from Les Miserables:

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.  Mt 18:22, 23

There are so many scriptures about forgiveness.  It’s hard to choose one among them because they are all so pertinent.  A few months ago, I was reading “The Forgiveness Fix” by Amy Newmark, which is part of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  The stories included are loaded with ideas about wrongs unjustly committed against others and how those who were wronged found the depth of soul to forgive.  Reading the stories made me think about people in my past whom I needed to forgive.  Some of them were from long ago and not generally part of my consciousness.  However, they were obviously not forgotten since the thought of them dredged up the same old scenarios.  There were two in particular from my days studying abroad when I was twenty.

The first one I thought of was a professor I had for French literature.  It no longer matters what happened, but the incident has stuck with me and in fact has become a story to relate to my own international students who are studying here in the United States.  It had to do with words in French and English that are “false friends.”  Both languages have the same word, but they mean something different in each language.  Anyway, I decided to look up the professor online since google has so much information.  As it turns out, I had no idea at the time that he was a famous expert in literature having written books of his own.  He not only taught us, the foreign students, but also taught native students, and it appears that his native students loved him.  Finding articles about him online helped me to appreciate him in a different light.  It became clear that it was a simple case of my misunderstanding due to the word used, combined with his deep love of great literature.  Forgiving him helped me to see that his life had meaning and goodness to a lot of people.  

The other person was a little more difficult since it involved the woman who ran the boarding house where I stayed in that country.  God gave me the power and grace to forgive her as well.  A few months after forgiving her, I was going through some old papers and found her name.  I decided to look her up as well.  This time, there was not a lot of information, but there was one small note in an old newspaper.  It was an obituary.  The obituary said that her husband had died suddenly on Christmas Eve in Holland (they may have been Dutch immigrants to the country where I was) seven years before I met her.  He was just sixty years old.  What perspective that little note gave me!  That must have been so difficult for her.  The address was the same as the place where I stayed, and so she must have been left with a very large house to run by herself, it being her only source of income.  I now believe that she was just heartbroken and bitter without much sympathy left for a naïve twenty year whose American cultural mannerisms she did not understand (and vice versa!).

From these two lessons, I have learned how truly important it is to forgive.  We have no idea what has happened in other people’s lives to make them the way they are.  We all live in our human condition, with all of the baggage that has happened in our lives.  It becomes clear why Jesus said, 

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Mt 6:14, 15

We have such a supreme example of one who forgave the impossible.  Imagine the pain that Jesus was suffering through, not only physically, but also perhaps emotionally.  Was all of his work on earth in vain?  Where were his disciples?  We know of only one that was present at the crucifixion with his mother.  Yet, he trusted God his Father, and found the compassion and strength to think of others and to say:

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.  Lk 23:34